Gramercy
by ichthyosaurus
Summary: Astrid offers a backhanded kind of appreciation for the black sheep Hiccup's always been.


I only just saw the HTTYD movie last week and I had to write something :) The premise for this conversation was inspired by The Antic Repartee's what-if story "Hitchups," which explores what might have happened had Hiccup departed with Toothless when he'd intended.

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><p>In Berk, Hiccup thought, there were two seasons: winter and hail. This evening hovered between those; it had done a little of both that day. Night had settled in early. Hiccup gingerly navigated the familiar path, attempting to judge in dim lamplight which patches of dirt were iced over. However accustomed he'd already become to the prosthetic leg in a few months' time, he had no illusion as to who would emerge the victor in a contest against an icy incline.<p>

Ahead, a Deadly Nadder's fiery exhalation briefly illuminated the scene. Vikings wrapped in bulky furs hurried around the village, eager to finish their errands and retreat to the warmth and conversation to be found in the great-hall. Then the fire faded and they were reduced again to moon-trimmed silhouettes. They hailed him heartily as he passed, with a few backslaps that nearly sent him into the mud. His newfound popularity was still taking some getting used to; he couldn't recall his shoulders being so bruised when he'd been the village pariah. Still, it was a satisfying ache.

A Fishlegs-shaped shadow shuffled his way. He was squinting at a book by the dim light of his own lamp. His eyes would ruin that way, but it was nice to know that an inclination towards nerdiness in Berk was not a phenomenon isolated in the person of Hiccup Haddock.

Hiccup's prosthetic skidded a little and he windmilled for balance. Fortunately, he did not fall on his face. This time.

He'd left Toothless behind in his house, snoozing away in front of a fire he kept lit with a lazy snort every so often. As of late the dragon, and every other in the village, had become sluggish and taken to sleeping the better part of the day. Hiccup suspected they were preparing for their season of hibernation—in the times of hostility between Berk and the dragons, the deep of winter had always yielded the fewest raids. Assumedly their bygone queen and captor, the Red Death, had followed a similar pattern. Only the tiny Terrible Terrors exhibited their usual energy.

Winter, in all its misery, had always provided a respite that Berk traditionally used to rebuild itself after a season of raids from both dragons and neighboring Vikings. Now that there weren't really any houses to reframe or roofs to reroof, there seemed an inordinate amount of free time, mostly spent in companionable nights at the great-hall.

That was not where Hiccup was headed. His destination lay in the opposite direction, against the sea. Slowly, surely, he trudged toward it. The dock house was a sturdy little structure of wood and stone that was faintly outlined against the sea and stars. It was only one of the lookouts placed at critical stations around Berk, including the pastures and the armory. Vigilance demanded that someone be attendant at the dock at all times; in the event of a raid by avaricious Vikings, both fight and flight depended largely on the security of their small fleet.

A glow flickered through the slats of wooden shutters. Before he reached it the door was opened, and Astrid stepped back to let him in. He handed her some rolls of bread he'd wrapped in a cloth. Hanging on the wall and piled more or less neatly around the dock house interior were various nautical accessories: mooring lines, oars, nets.

"How are the eggs?" Astrid asked, accepting the rolls. "Did she let you get a look at them?"

"For a while." He showed her his sketches. Altogether there were three. Very exciting, but he had hoped eggs were laid singly. Berk was a mighty little town but accommodating an expanding dragon population would tax it too far. Already he'd brought up with his father the idea of establishing a designated space further up the mountain for them to nest.

Astrid sat down on the floor cross-legged and resumed staring out at the sea. Hiccup settled next to her. He'd accompanied her a couple of times before on these night watches, and she had joined him on a few. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they didn't.

After the initial excitement following the Red Death's destruction (and Hiccup's subsequent heady snooze), he'd worried that Astrid's sudden and fierce affection might dwindle without heroics to kindle it. He needn't have. The Astrid who looked at him now was not the one whose rare, brief glances his way were concluded with dismissive disdain for so many years, but rather the girl who had studied him so intently atop that cliff, demanding to hear _'why'_ so she could remember what he said. The Hiccup who wouldn't, it turned out, was far more interesting than the Hiccup who couldn't.

Even so, he always felt like he'd swallowed butterflies when he looked her way.

For a little while they munched in comfortable silence. Astrid was unusually quiet. Normally she would have found something to punch him for already, if only to have an excuse to kiss him after. An inquiry into Astrid's emotional state, however, had to be delicately phrased if he hoped to escape retribution for asking.

Eventually, he felt he had to ask. "Is everything okay?"

At first she didn't answer. Then, still looking out, she said, "I've been wondering."

"About what?"

"Do you ever think about the day when I found out about you and Toothless?" She bit into a roll.

"Sure." It was the day he'd found the relief of an ally—and not just anyone, but the person whose support he'd least expected and most desired, after his father's. It was almost worth almost getting snacked on by a giant malevolent dragon. "Don't you?"

"Mm-hm. I wonder what might have happened. What if you'd left when you meant to?" She took a stone to her ax blade, though Hiccup could have sworn he could shave with it. If he had to shave.

He fought back a yawn. "Who knows? I'm just glad it never came to that."

"But you were ready to. If I hadn't followed you there, if you hadn't chased me when I ran, you'd be gone."

Now that she brought it up, the possibilities manifested unpleasantly in his imagination. Still on the run, that enormous beast still lurking in the volcanic depths of the mountain, his father convinced that his only son had abandoned the village on the verge of showing promise. It gave him the willies, what could have been.

"Would you have missed us?" Astrid asked.

"Yes," Hiccup said truthfully. Odin help him, he would have.

"And me?"

"Of course," said Hiccup. "I always liked you." Miraculously, he didn't blush. Maybe because while he'd always been a little moony over her, he'd sincerely admired her skill and courage.

She traced the handle of her battle-axe with her finger. "I didn't always like you."

"Oh." The frank admission took him aback. "Well, I figured, I guess. I mean, I couldn't throw an axe, it never took Snotlout more than a few seconds to put me in a headlock, standing up too quickly made me dizzy-"

"It wasn't that. It was-"

"Are you about to gesture to all of me?" he asked glumly.

"Sh." She punched his side lightly—meaning it likely wouldn't bruise. "I'm trying to be nice."

Nice? Hiccup wasn't sure what to think.

"I didn't like you because you were _weird_," she said. "You were always messing around with some experiment and getting in trouble. You were never where you were supposed to be, because you'd be off chasing gnomes or trolls or whatever."

"Somebody had to avenge Gobber's left socks," mumbled Hiccup.

She went on as though she hadn't heard. "Your head was always in the clouds. Even when you were around, you weren't really there. Or you were so cynical that it was obvious you were just going through the motions, trying to act the way you thought everybody wanted you to, and you weren't very good at it."

"Could you stop being nice now?"

"At first I thought everything was just a big joke to you. And later, I _knew_ it was all a big joke to you." Astrid put down the axe and looked at him. "Not because you thought it was funny, but because you thought it was all so ridiculous. Everything we did, why we did it, and how, it was just so absurd to you."

Hiccup began to protest, to say that he'd never thought that at all, but the words died as he tried to think of them. Because she was right.

He'd grown up feeling the lone sane person in a village full of loons, with the occasional glimmer of lucidity from Gobber that disappeared whenever he spiraled off into another story about the Boneknapper or this weird yak he'd met. Whenever Hiccup tried to do things Berk's way, his frustration at his inability to do so coupled with his disbelief at the irrationality of the established way mounted until he lapsed into sarcasm and a vow to make his method better.

Now Astrid was staring right at him. "I could tell. Like it was Berk you rejected, not the other way around. Did you even feel like an outcast?"

Yes, and no. A lurid embarrassment was beginning to flood his stomach.

She went back to her axe, but her voice stayed soft. "No matter how much you wanted to be one of us, you never wanted to be _like_ us. You would rather have spent the rest of your life a black sheep than be anything like us."

"I'm sorry," the words tumbled out. "I didn't mean—never meant to-"

She punched him in the arm now. "Shut up. I'm not done being nice."

"Aren't you?"

"You know why I _really_ didn't like you?"

Hiccup wilted a little under her glare. "I imagine you'll tell me."

"It was because-" she put down the stone again- "I was afraid you were right. That we were just caught in some dumb cycle where we made the same mistakes every day for generations and never changed because we were too thick-skulled to see what we were doing wrong. It was shaming."

Still attempting to digest Astrid using the word 'afraid' in reference to herself, Hiccup was at a loss. Astrid was studying the bewilderment on his face.

"So I guess what I'm saying is, thanks." And she was done.

How that all wrapped up into a package of gratitude was entirely beyond him. Asking might prompt her to be _nice_ again, but he did anyway. "Thanks for what?"

"For chasing me that day." Said with a roll of the eyes because she had to explain it. "You were ready to give up on us. So ready you were going to leave. But you came after me. Some part of you still had enough faith in me to believe I could understand." She actually smiled. "And even though your arena final turned out so badly, you were still willing to give it a shot. That means something."

"Oh." Hiccup's nose itched and he scratched it. "I've never thought of it that way." Truthfully, his decision to leave was, in his conscious reasoning, based on his belief that _he_ just wasn't the person to inspire confidence in the people of Berk. Maybe she had a point. Maybe it was a little of both.

Realizing he still held half a roll, he jammed it in his mouth to make time to think. Astrid sat quietly, having seemingly exhausted her say. The best credit he could do her words was to carefully consider them. He'd never heard her speak so plainly, and it made him nervous to think she felt strongly enough about the subject that she delivered a rare monologue. A few minutes passed silently, save for the noise of waves slapping the dock and activity in the village behind them.

"So what changed your mind?" he asked eventually. "One ride? That's all it took to reverse all the years of damage I'd done to my reputation?"

Astrid yawned. "Suspecting I'm wrong is one thing. Being proven wrong is something else. I can handle that."

Hiccup didn't argue but the nuances of this were a little too fine for him to grasp.

Whatever might have been, this is the way things were: dragons roamed the village and everybody was happy about it, his dad spoke to him like an equal, and Astrid could tolerate sharing the same breathing space with him. Speculative 'if's were only practical in predicting events to come, not circumstances that did not and now could never occur.

Why had she brought it up? Sometimes, Hiccup decided, you needed to clarify something for your own peace of mind. It occurred to him that she might be concerned he would mistake her newfound attachment to him as flighty idolization for the town hero, and wanted to explain her reasons. She needn't have worried. Flightiness was not ever something she could be accused of. Whether or not her gratitude was a disguised apology he couldn't say, but it didn't matter.

Twice, he mused ruefully, she'd punched him without the usual accompanying reassurance of affection. She must have been thinking the same thing. For the first time ever, she reached out and put her hand over his. Hiccup couldn't hide how pleased he was. Kisses were fine and good and he'd never turn one down, but holding hands had a casual affection to it he liked.

"You're still weird."

"Yeah."

"Crazy, too."

"That's the kettle calling the Night Fury black."

She punched him a third time, then took his hand again.

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><p>Reviews appreciated :)<p> 


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